Walking in Pimlico (36 page)

I sat good and still, till my legs ached and my feet felt like lumps of clay, and I stared hard at the doorknob till there was no light to see it by. Here was I, with no nerve and a weak bladder, in a murdered man’s house with the murderer! For there were still creaks and scufflings outside the door, and on the stairs I heard the footsteps of fifty murderers traipsing up and down in their shifty way! Then bangs started, dull thuds at first, building up to thunderings, like the whole house was going to come down. And I fancied that the murderer had brought all his pals with him, rounded up every dark-visaged villain in Birmingham and had them all round for a shindig at the scene of his best misdeed, at Paradise-court. (This is how my fancy runs away with me! It is a sore trial and no mistake.) But then it seemed the noise was coming from a different place, and indeed I realized (and felt foolish) that here was the noise from the house next door, another lodging house in fact, and full of Paddys, who all wear big boots. Of course.

But so put about was I by now that it was a little comfort to know that there were other living beings nearby, and I resolved to make my exit quietly and quickly, thinking that if there were indeed villains now teeming around Halls’s old house (looking for his money, no doubt) they might be distracted. I gathered up my coat and comforter and put the gag-book and song-book in my pocket. When I opened the door (and this could not be done silently, for it stuck and
had to be pulled hard and clattered against the jamb), I half expected the passage to be crowded with villains, all waiting on me, and I had prepared a little speech, not very witty but with the option of gags, to get me along it and down the stairs. But it was not necessary. For here were shadows and dimness, and the long pale stream of light coming through the open door of the front room (which had been Mrs Marsh’s), but no villains. Down the stairs and into the front hall, and a swift glance back down the passage where, strange, I had thought the door stood open to Halls’s back parlour where all the horror took place, but now it was closed. I stopped for a moment and looked and listened, and it seemed to me, although my fancy was running wild, that there was someone in there, who didn’t want to be seen. For I am certain I heard a shuffle or a rustle or a moving of feet.

Certain, but not as insistent as my bladder, which was giving me clear directions and I did not want to go agin it.

Corney Sage – New Clay

I
am on my way to the Vine Music Hall, my linen bag over my shoulder in which there is a pair of clogs and my little cloth to wipe them with. The tools of my trade. Indeed, there is much trade hereabouts, and New Clay is not at all the countrified place I thought it was going to be when I applied to Mr Bellmaker, landlord of the establishment. There might have been green fields here at one time, and, true to you, if I shin up the church tower and the smoke cleared for half an hour I could probably con some in a neighbouring county, but as a regular sight they are like virtuous women, hard to find. Here are brickmakers and nailmakers and ironmakers – and moneymakers, of course, for where you find poor people toiling hard and wearing their lives away for tuppence and starving to make a day of it, you will also discover fat old men keeping company with port and cigars and having a disregard for anything except a bag of money.

I am becoming cross-hatched, I believe, for I have seen too much misery of late, and still it comes on.

But I have reached the Vine, on my way passing a bill flapping on the foundry wall on which ‘Mr Corney Sage, comic vocalist and champion clog-dancer’ sits above ‘the Sisters Delmar, vocalists
and danseuses, Professor Bill Evemi, the prestidigitateur, and Mr Chapman with his sagacious canines, Brutus and Nero’. I pass the Quarry where the show folks are arriving with their living vans in readiness for the Wakes which will soon be setting up on the Market Place. The Vine might be seen from the Market Place, for it is a blaze of lamps, within and without, and warm and cheerful, in a tired kind of way.

I pick my way through the tables and chairs, nodding, for in New Clay cheery greetings and slaps on the back are not the order of the day. Indeed I wonder how it is that the music hall has any business at all, so downcast is the population, and certain Mr – or should I say Captain – Bellmaker does not ornament the company with good humour, but lays on it with bad grace. He is no more a captain than I am, but makes up for it by wearing a cocked hat, and being what is called a ‘leading light’ in the town. It is down to him that some working men have little gardens, though no bigger than a pocket handkercher it must be said, and grow potatoes and turnips from seeds bought specially at the Vine Public House. And he thought up the Working Man’s Bicycling Club, weekly gallivants in the summer, returning for liquid refreshment at the Vine Public House. Where also are held the Penny Bank, and the Burial Club, and the Glee Club. In the street, people move aside to let Captain Bellmaker pass. He is large-whiskered and has been a ship’s captain (hence his title), sailing the South China Seas with a crew of saints and sinners and he found God when, shipwrecked on an island and tortured by native tattooists (all women), he was saved by a plague of locusts arriving which ate everyone and everything except him.

It is an extraordinary day, though, for they mostly don’t have much to distinguish them. Two things make it extraordinary. First, the news that Farmer Hardwood, a grim-faced young chap, who usually sits by the door like a statue with his glass of ale, has come into a fortune, and has left the farm, his aged mother, his cattle, pigs
and turnips, even his best suit! It is rumoured he has gone to London, and this I make much of in my patter.

‘I hear Farmer Hardwood’s gone off to Lunnon town,’ I say, ‘where men of his size and girth – (
knowing wink
) – are much sought after by doctors and medical men. And ladies – (
another knowing wink
). In fact, a good friend of mine, who is something in the medical line, says Farmer Hardwood’s reputation has gone before him. At least this much – (
gesture
) – before him!’

Some kids who have crept around the door snort and stuff their hands into their mouths, otherwise I am talking to the moon, and indeed I catch sight of myself as I clatter about for the clog dance in a large mirror recently installed. For a moment I don’t recognize myself, and wonder who the little chap is with a short jacket like mine. And then I realize, it is me, and I wasn’t expecting to see myself look so pale and my red hair, once a crowning glory, growing thin, and more grey than red. My hands look too big and my legs too long, and both are paining me these days with aches in the joints and stiffness in the damp weather. Mirrors tell secrets and lies of course. Like many things – and people – in life.

And while I am dancing (for I hardly have to think about it now) I consider the second thing that makes this Wednesday extraordinary – a letter delivered to my lodgings this morning and handed to me by Mrs Gumbs over my cup of tea. A letter from Mrs Strong, of Duchess-court, telling me that Lucy Fitch is dead. Sudden and not explainable, but perhaps another seizure, though a pillow on the floor is not accounted for. Nor the locket which had dropped from her neck and was smashed to flinders.

I have been much put out, Corney, with doctors and police, and have had an inquest to attend and a funeral also. I thought I should write to you sooner only the note that you left with your address on I have mislaid, and have had to
make enquiries. Indeed, it was Mr Minton at the Great Turk who told me where you are, for he is a great one for the Era, the Organ of the Profession, and reads it from front to back every Sunday.

Mr Shovelton has been a great help to me and asks me to say that, when we are straight here, he will visit you, for he has things to say to you. Perhaps the same as he has said to me.

I am glad you visited us and saw Lucy the last time, and I trust you will remember her as she used to be before she was taken bad, for she was always a good girl though headstrong. I am much alone now, dear Corney, so I had taken up my old work again, for I still have the skills and strength, scrubbing floors and moving barrels keeping me up to the mark. Kitty has left me too, and is dressing hats in London so I have nothing to keep me here.

Trusting you are well in your profession and life is being kind to you,

   
Your friend and Lucy Fitch’s grieving mother,

       
Harriet Strong

This news has put me in a strange take all day, and I have been walking about, instead of sleeping, and thinking about Bessie Spooner and Lucy, and wondering what Mr Shovelton might have to say to me that he would take the trouble to come all the way here.

Now the piano strikes up a jaunty tune and I’m off the stage as the Sisters Delmar prance on, and certain I am out of sorts, so I send a note to the Captain that I shall not do my second turn, feeling cheap, and will go to bed directly. The Delmars have done and squeeze past me, giggling and light-fingered, so I clutch my pockets where I am able.

‘Here, Corney,’ says one of them, ‘this is our last night. We’ve got
a nobby spot at Paul’s in Brum and have to open tomorrow, so we’re finishing here early.’

I say I’m right pleased for them, and wish them success and plenty of coin, and on the way back to my lodgings I wonder what Bellmaker will do tomorrow with a turn short. But it is not my concern, and certain I am so weary that I hardly know where I am and find myself outside Mrs Gumbs’s door before I know it. That lady is early to bed as a rule, but as I go in she comes out of her sitting room, with her head full of rags and a look upon her face as would stop a saint in his tracks.

‘When I took you on, you said nothing about letters and messages, and here are two in one day! I am not a messenger-service, Mr Sage,’ she cries, ‘and no matter how much you pay me, I will not take on those duties. I keep respectable lodgings. I am a widow and a paid-up member of the New Methodists and Dr Carroll’s sick club, and how you, a jig-dancer in a public house, can expect me to carry notes and messages from persons unknown, well I . . . ’

She ran out of outrage, and as I am eager that she does not fuel herself up again and have another go, I says as quickly and mildly as I can muster, ‘I am very sorry to hear that you have been put out on my account, Mrs Gumbs, for no one knows better than me what a trying life it is for a respectable lady to keep herself from falling out of favour with the Methodys. As you will recall, my own grandmother, God bless her, had just that awkwardness to fret over when she took in a police constable as a favour. For, as you know, the police are called out all times of the day and night, and she was constantly answering her back door as well as her front, taking notes and messages for him. And this police constable never thanked her nor gave her so much as a penny for her trouble. She was very nearly out of the New Connexion in her part of Cottlingham. Which is near the fine city of Cambridge, as you know, Mrs Gumbs.’

I don’t stop to draw breath until I have talked her down. I talk
her down and round and back into her sitting room and into her tea caddy and a nice pot of tea. No malice intended, of course, just pleasant relations and getting on. So she is sweet enough when we get around to the message from a person unknown.

‘A lady, I would say, Mr Sage, for I know a lady when I meet one. Well-spoken and quiet, but not so refined that she had brought paper with her. By no means, for she came in and sat in the hall at my little table and wrote with the stub of a pencil on the back of a scrap of paper she brung out the bottom of her bag! But she was very forceful about giving it to you as soon as you returned, which is why I have been a-sitting here waiting.’

I am much obliged, and weary also, so I ask for the note and the message and silently hope that another tale might not be attached to her parting with it.

The message, she says, is to read the note, taking it out of the drawer in the dresser where she keeps her hairpins and a ball of string. It is folded over and has my name upon it, ‘Mr Corney Sage, comedian, care of Mrs Gumbs, Milk Street’. All very proper. And when I unfold it:

The Headless Woman Concert Hall

New Clay

My dear Mr Sage

I wonder if you would be kind enough to call upon me at the above hostelry tomorrow at ten o’clock. I have recently arrived, having taken the position of Lady Pianiste, and would much value your re-acquaintance as I know no one in this town.

Yours, very truly

     
Phyllida Marweather (Miss)

Who is this lady, Mrs Gumbs, do you know her? I ask, and she replies she has never seen her before, but that she gets out so little,
being much occupied with cleaning and laundry, that it’s a wonder she remembers who her children are. And then takes up where she left off about the New Methodists and being a messenger. I am on my beam-ends by this time and would like very much to be in my bed, even though it is narrower than a jacktar’s berth and twice as damp. I turn the note over to fold it up and I am struck by my own name and my own writing.